


Pavlov's Dog

by neveralarch



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, No IRB Approval, thought experiments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-21
Updated: 2012-03-21
Packaged: 2017-11-02 08:18:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveralarch/pseuds/neveralarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seb, taking orders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pavlov's Dog

The first time Seb gets a job from Moriarty, it's through three intermediaries and Seb's favourite handler. Seb gets the mark's business card, with a time range and a place scribbled on the back. But Seb’s eyes are on the envelope that comes with the card, and he’s already thinking about what he’ll do with his pay. He could be a sniper like the ones in movies, the sniper who only cares about the hit and the adrenaline rush of murder. But instead Seb's the kind of sniper who cares about whether he's going to pay rent this week, and where the groceries are coming from. He counts his advance out into little piles of fifty-pound notes; for the bills, for this week’s necessities, for next week. Seb only looks at the business card when he’s done counting.

The job's easy, as far as jobs go. Seb spends three hours on a rooftop in the middle of the night, waiting until the mark steps out of his secret meeting to smoke on the balcony opposite. The mark takes out his cigar case, and Seb sights on the flash of lighter.

Seb squeezes the trigger, and the man falls. Another shot to make sure. Then people are screaming and Seb is packing up, moving deliberately, tucking the rifle's case into his duffel.

The rest of Seb's fee is wired to his Swiss account within the hour. A leading light of European business has just winked out, and that's all Seb knows about the first job.

\---

The second time Seb gets a job from Moriarty, Moriarty goes direct to his handler. Freaks her out a bit, because you don't want an up-and-coming criminal genius to know your name or know where you live. Mary tells Seb about it later, safe and sound in Seb's kitchen, describing Moriarty's jerky energy, his shifting accent and tone.

"Scary as fuck," she confides, "but it's a good job. We're getting involved in politics. Your choice of when and where to drop the mark, but it has to be this week."

"Planning costs extra," says Seb. It's easier to get away with murder when you're in control of the variables, but it takes more time, reduces the amount of his life he can spend sleeping or playing cards or trying to find his cigarettes from where they've been kicked under the fridge.

"Triple the normal fee," says Mary. "Moriarty's throwing his money around." She pauses, tapping a pen against her lip. "I'd worry about what all that extra pay is about, though." Mary sets the pen down, clattering it on the table. "He wants something."

"It's work." Seb shrugs. "If he'll pay for it, who cares?"

Mary shrugs back, and leaves Seb to put it all together, map out every moving part. Two days later, the mark is dead, and Parliament is down one Member.

Moriarty sends his congratulations through Mary, a handwritten note that shifts idly between print and cursive. Otherwise it's bland and uninteresting, just a small token of respect. Seb burns it after reading.

\---

The third time Seb gets a job from Moriarty, the man comes to his door.

Which he shouldn't do.

When Seb was just starting out, he would meet clients personally, tell them where to find him, and generally act like a naive idiot. He was still used to the army, where people knew your face and could see your dog tags, even as you were killing them. Seb almost got assassinated twice by otherwise satisfied clients, before Mary stepped in and gave him a little breathing room, the extra barrier of a competent handler.

Clients know they're hiring Moran, but that's it. No faces, no meetings, no addresses, no way for a client to show up at Seb's door. Hell, Seb even moves every month or so, living on subleases and short term rentals, renting under false names. It's a necessary precaution, in his line of work, and Seb's too careful and too good to be tracked.

But here's a little man with a giant smile and a black suit that matches his dark eyes, knocking just loud enough to be grating instead of polite. Seb moves back from the peephole and unlocks his door. He leaves the chain on, though, only cracks the door open.

"Hello," says the man. His smile doesn't waver, fixed around his consonants and vowels. "Jim Moriarty. I'm here about a job."

"Talk to Mary," says Seb. He doesn't like this, doesn't like meeting clients, doesn't like knowing what they look like, how to identify them.

"I'm talking to you, Sebastian," says Moriarty. "Might I come in?"

If Seb slams the door on the most dangerous man in London, he'll be dead in a week, buried in pieces within the month. He unhooks the chain unwillingly, and lets Moriarty step inside.

"Very clean." Moriarty glances around the flat. Seb's been here for two days, maybe three. "Learned that in the military? Preparing for inspection?"

Seb doesn't say anything, just fumbles in his pocket for his packet of black clove cigarettes. He's not supposed to smoke in here, but he ripped out the fire alarms yesterday.

Moriarty shakes his head, though, and Seb stops with the cigarette halfway to his mouth.

"I hate the smell," explains Moriarty. "I think you can wait a moment, don't you?"

Seb shrugs, tucks the cigarette behind his ear, waits. Moriarty's smile twitches wider, but his eyes stay the same, deep black holes in his face.

"Do you travel?" he asks. "I've someone in France that needs taken care of."

"Local jobs only," says Seb, because trying to transport rifles over a border is miserable work, and using someone else's gun is even worse.

Moriarty's expression freezes, and his mouth opens, and Seb doesn’t care what he says, he’s not doing it. But the tone in Moriarty’s voice sweeps Seb up, knocks his legs out from under him, carries him on.

In four hours, Seb's in one of Moriarty's cars in the Chunnel, waiting to be let out into French customs. A rifle is waiting for him in Paris, and he's smoking cigarette after cigarette out of spite, letting the reek of tobacco and cloves seep into a car that Moriarty probably never drives anyway. Seb hates traveling, doesn't speak French. He doesn't understand why he took the job.

In eight hours a woman's dead and Seb's on the phone to Mary.

"I don't know how he got to you," she says. "I didn't tell him anything, not your first name, not your record-"

"No more jobs from Moriarty," says Seb.

"Good idea," says Mary, and rings off.

\---

The fourth time, Moriarty walks into the cafe where Seb's trying to have coffee.

"Sebastian!" Moriarty takes the chair opposite without asking. Seb grimaces into his coffee, hides the expression with the rim of his cup.

Moriarty has another job, his own former associate this time. The plan is clear, the pay is good.

Seb isn't taking any more jobs from Moriarty. Moriarty's wasting his time.

"Well?" asks Moriarty.

"Sure," says Seb, automatically, and then bites the inside of his cheek. Too late to take it back. "Give the details to Mary," he offers.

"No need," says Moriarty. "I'll come along with you, won't I? I'd love to see how the artist works."

"No clients on-site," says Seb. That's a hard-and-fast rule. If they want to watch from the distance or from nearby, fine, that's weird, but fine, as long as they keep out of Seb's way. Seb doesn't need any other moving parts when he's setting up and aiming, doesn't need someone disturbing the air as he gauges the wind.

"But you'll bend the rules for me, Sebastian," says Moriarty. His elbows rest on the table lightly, his shoulders push his head forward, and his mouth is in a pout, the picture of pleading. But his eyes are still deep black holes, waiting for something to fill them.

"Okay," says Seb, and breaks the coffee cup.

Moriarty laughs as Seb swears and picks pottery shards from his palm, and the barista hops the counter, dustpan and brush in hand.

\---

Sebastian Moran was a good soldier. He was good at taking orders, good at killing people, good at thinking and planning, and he made colonel young, not easily but with the kind of hard work that he felt in his spine and his calves and the blood pulsing in his ears. A father in the Foreign Office helped, but not as much as people think. Seb was going places, driven.

There was a slow fire burning at the base of his neck, shining out of his eyes, and if it got him to Colonel, it broke him as well. No one was surprised when Sebastian Moran was quietly forced to retire. Not even Seb, not really, though he swore and screamed and fought enough. He just didn't fit into the machine, and a choppy gear causes breakdowns, spits oil and blood.

But the army made him and the army broke him, and perhaps it isn't odd that he takes orders from Moriarty without thinking about it.

Seb mulls that over, and decides that it's fucking bullshit.

A commanding officer radiates a sense of assurance, of stability, of certainty. Moriarty, giggling and bumping into Seb's shoulder and ruining the line of sight, radiates good-humoured and unpredictable death.

Seb has been lying on the floor of this attic for the better part of two hours, and Moriarty has been a constant and annoying presence. Seb had expected the man to either settle down or get bored, but neither happened, Moriarty had just kept going and talking and asking questions.

"What's this bit?" he asks, prodding the rifle and throwing off the sight _again_.

"It's the scope," says Seb, resettling the rifle. He's keeping it on the window of the building across the way, waiting for the mark to get up from his desk and present a better target. He could make the shot now, but it wouldn't be fatal.

"Scoping out the enemy," says Moriarty, and he inches closer, looking out the window alongside the barrel. "What's this bit?"

Seb is absolutely certain that Moriarty knows the name of every piece of this Remington, he knows the make and model and the fact that Seb's using it as a burner, it's a cheap piece of shit that he'll wipe and drop, and Seb is sick to death of useless questions.

"It's the barrel," says Seb.

The mark stands up. Seb's already squeezing the trigger when Moriarty shakes his head. Seb doesn't see it, just feels the brush of air from the movement.

"Wait," says Moriarty.

"He's in perfect sight," says Seb, but his finger doesn't move.

"I said wait," says Moriarty.

The mark turns, and steps to the window. He opens it, leans out, takes a breath of fresh air.

"Now," says Moriarty, and Seb pulls.

The mark’s still leaning out, and the bullet enters his forehead and goes out through the back of his skull, into the office beyond. The mark pitches backwards with the force of the shot, hits the half-open window and lurches forward again until he’s collapsed over the windowsill, half in and half out of his office. Blood drips from his mess of a head onto the street below, and Seb can imagine the small accumulating pool of red and the people looking up, up, trying to see what’s happening.

Seb takes his eye away from the scope, sits up on his knees and breathes. In a moment he'll begin dismantling the Remington, getting ready to go. In a moment.

"Beautiful," murmurs Moriarty. He doesn’t even have binoculars, he’s just sitting there, eyes closed and smiling. Creepy little fucker. Seb rests his hands on his thighs, rubs his sweaty hands against the leather of his gloves. Moriarty opens his eyes, and he smiles wider to see Seb looking at him.

"Happy?" Seb asks.

"Very," says Moriarty. His black-hole eyes have something in them, now, some satisfaction deep in the back of their emptiness. "Good boy."

Seb starts to tell Moriarty to fuck off, starts to tell him to show some respect, be more professional, not talk to him like a dog or like someone he owns.

But the impulse shorts out, somewhere between brain and tongue, and Seb just looks at Moriarty with his mouth open, and Moriarty _grins_.

\---

"You need to get rid of him," says Mary, urgent and worried on the telephone. "He's dangerous, and he's getting too close."

"Yeah, thanks, I know." Seb’s pacing in his flat, and fingers snap as he looks for a cigarette. "But what am I supposed to do? He keeps showing up, he’s fucking following me."

"Leave the country," says Mary. "Go back to India. Get out of here. Give me a day and I'll have a passport for you."

There's a knock at the door, too loud to be polite.

"Yeah," says Seb. "Hold on, I'll call you back."

Seb doesn’t call Mary back. It’s Moriarty, he’s got a job, he needs a man and a rifle. Seb follows him out the door. He's gone for two days.

Moriarty has Seb plan the job this time, watches as he researches the mark, picks the site, sets up the rifle. There's a woman in a suit, and Seb waits until she's almost out of range, in the perfect position for Moriarty to watch.

Moriarty pats him on the head when it's done, and Seb only barely stops himself from leaning into it.

"Very good," says Moriarty, and leaves Seb to clean up.

Seb calls Mary on the way back to his flat, and says ‘yeah’ about a half-dozen times, accepts every single one of her suggestions for how to get away from Moriarty. But Seb doesn't leave for India, he doesn't move.

He doesn't see Moriarty for three months.

\---

The kind of money Seb makes for one hit, you'd think he'd be set up for life after a dozen or so jobs. But there's Mary's percentage, and rent, and food, and guns, and actually that's not very much at all. But Seb likes to play cards, and he likes to go to the track. He's stellar at poker and gin and bridge, doesn't have to cheat unless he's got a bad partner, but he has to lose sometimes or he gets banned from the houses. And, honestly, Seb's rubbish at horses and always bets too much and too often and he never, ever wins.

After one month, the money runs out and Seb has to take another job.

It's quick and impersonal. Mary sets him up with a client, they make a plan, the mark's gone within a day. Seb packs up, dumps the rifle (another cheap Remington), and they're done. The money's not as good as Moriarty's, but it's a lot less trouble. Mary drinks with him to celebrate, pours white wine into plastic cups and toasts some good work.

"You don't need him," she says.

"Nah." Seb raises a hand to ruffle his own hair, but he catches it and sets it back down on his thigh. "Got you, don't I?"

Mary smiles, and refills their cups, and they fall asleep on the couch, head to toe, and wake up with hangovers in the morning.

Outside of work, Mary doesn't ask anything of Seb, and Seb doesn't need anything from her. They've got their own lives. It's the most comfortable friendship Seb's ever had, and the best working relationship he could hope for.

He doesn't need Moriarty.

Every time there's footsteps through the hall Seb hopes that it's him, and he's always disappointed when the footsteps move on to some other flat.

He could never hear Moriarty coming, anyway.

\---

Two more months and two hits later, and Seb's walking down the street when a smooth black Jag pulls up alongside. Seb keeps walking but the window rolls down and Moriarty sticks his head out. He's got a pair of shitty plastic sunglasses on, the kind Seb’s bought for a fiver when the sun was especially bad. They don’t match the heavy gold rings on the fingers Moriarty's wiggling at Seb.

"Sebastian!" says Moriarty.

Seb nods, keeps walking. Mary would be worried and probably amused if she saw him getting solicited on the street, leaning into Moriarty's car.

The jag pulls forward a little, enough that Moriarty can catch Seb's eye.

"Get in," says Moriarty and Seb

-keeps walking, goes home, calls Mary, leaves town, moves to India, does something sensible-

gets in the car.

The interior is leather and not new, but worn in the kind of way where it gets carefully cleaned every evening by the best help money can buy. Moriarty leans across and puts his hand on Seb's thigh as the driver takes them back into traffic.

"I need an escort to a little _do_ at the Italian embassy," says Moriarty. "A bodyguard, and maybe a hit, if things go poorly."

"I'm a sniper," says Seb. "No personal work."

Moriarty's hand tightens on his thigh, and Seb can feel the warm threat of Moriarty's fingers and the hard unforgiving bands of his rings. Then Moriarty lets go, leans back.

"I'm just asking," says Moriarty. "I like you, Sebastian. You're careful, and competent, and you do what I tell you. But you can always say no."

There's no unspoken threat. Moriarty's face is blank, waiting. He gestures at the driver, and the car begins to slow, ready for Seb to leave.

"When's the embassy thing?" asks Seb. Moriarty's entire face lights up, a picture of pleased delight, if only his eyes would sparkle or shine or do anything but blankly stare.

\---

Moriarty has a suit for Seb, deep black with an ash grey tie, and Seb can't complain about it when he's wearing ripped jeans and a t-shirt. He can wonder about how Moriarty got his measurements, though.

They stop at a cafe, and Moriarty gets tea while Seb changes in the bathroom. Seb knots the tie like he always has, like the army taught him, around and under and then pulled through, a neat skinny knot holding the tie in place. Seb leaves it loose, tries to tuck his hands in his trouser pockets (there aren't any), and then comes out of the bathroom, his old clothes tucked under one arm.

Moriarty smiles when he sees Seb, makes an exaggerated look of distaste when he sees the tie.

"So boring," says Moriarty, as he leaves his half-full cup on the counter. "But I'll fix it for you."

Seb shrugs and follows Moriarty back out the door.

Moriarty reknots the tie in the car, his eyes fixed on Seb's jugular and his hands busy around Seb's shoulders and nape. The tie tightens around Seb's neck and he swallows, eyes fixed on the ceiling, never drifting down to Moriarty’s white narrow fingers around his throat. The knot Moriarty leaves behind looks odd, folded in and around itself like a woven collar. Seb looks at it in the driver's mirror as they pull up to the embassy.

"It's called an Atlantic knot," says Moriarty, and shoos him out of the car. "Open my door for me."

"Guns?" asks Seb. There wasn't a holster with the suit, but he had sort of assumed that he was here for a real job.

"You can't bring a gun into an embassy, Sebastian." Moriarty rolls his eyes and pushes Seb until he opens his door and walk around the car to get Moriarty's. Moriarty ducks down and out into the open, smiling glassily at the doormen and the security guards. "We'll have to use our ingenuity."

The guards search Seb and Moriarty as they go in, and then the inner doors open into a ballroom with chattering men in suits and women in dresses or slacks, business casual. Moriarty dives into the melee, ignoring the waiters who try to give him drinks or cheese on sticks, and Seb follows, hands still searching for the absent pockets.

Moriarty's talking to a woman with her hair coiled into a bun and a carefully made-up face. They're speaking Russian, possibly. Seb settles behind Moriarty's shoulder and clasps hands behind his back, settles into parade rest. The woman's green-blue eyes flick to Seb and away, focusing on Moriarty.

Seb speaks some Farsi, more Hindi and Punjabi. He's fluent in Tamil and in Portuguese. Probably he should learn some more European languages, if he's going to be working with Moriarty.

Not that Seb should be making plans. But if he _were_ to-

Moriarty kisses the woman's hand and twists away, making for a tall man with a balding head. The woman smiles and waves at Seb as he follows Moriarty, tugged by the invisible leash between bodyguard and employer.

Moriarty doesn't speak English with anyone that night. Seb gets the message loud and clear - it's his job to follow and glower, not to understand.

It's easy, really, up until Seb follows Moriarty and his latest conversational partner into an office upstairs, and watches as Moriarty slams the man's head into the desk over and over and over until blood is streaming from cuts in the man's face and his body finally has taken too much strain and he crumbles with a snapped neck and dying eyes.

Moriarty slicks back his hair with bloody hands and grins like something feral.

"Someone'll come running," says Seb. What a fucking mess. There's a reason Seb prefers guns. It's distant and clean and you don't have to worry about picking the blood out from under your fingernails.

"It's soundproofed, all of the offices here are cut off from noise and laughter and life." Moriarty spreads his arms wide, still ebullient from the kill, probably. It takes some men like that. Killing makes Seb flatten out and stop thinking, but death seems to have thrown Moriarty into overdrive.

"We've fifteen minutes _at least_ before anyone notices that this waste of air isn't wasting it any longer," continues Moriarty. "Get us out of here, won't you, Sebastian?"

Seb stops thinking about Moriarty, starts thinking of exit strategies.

There's a window, but the wall skids away underneath it, no balcony or convenient trees. The hallway outside is full of guests, and Moriarty's covered in blood, his hair is shining with it, and now Moriarty reaches his blood-drenched hands up and wipes at his face, leaving smears of blood under those black-hole eyes, above the slice of his sharp white grin-

"Focus, Se-bas-ti-an," sings Moriarty.

Seb focuses.

Hall is a no-go, and there aren’t any other exits, so it'll have to be the window after all. It's only a five meter drop if Seb fucks it up.

"How good at climbing are you?" asks Seb. He moves to look out the window. No guards in direct sight, but the wall looks tough, without much in the way of handholds.

"Terrible," says Moriarty, sketching a wide arc with his hands. "Look at my weak little arms! Oh, and I'm a bit slippery at the moment."

Slippery, yes, but Seb just watched Moriarty beat a man to death with those weak little arms. He pulls the window all the way open, and stares at Moriarty in disbelief.

"You'll have to carry me," says Moriarty. Something in the darkness of his eyes winks without a twitch of Moriarty's eyelids.

In the background of Seb's brain, understanding slots into place. It's not unquestioning, unwarranted obedience that he's giving Moriarty. He's rising to the challenge, the expectations behind the darkness in Moriarty’s eyes. Proving that darkness right when it expects more of him, proving it wrong when it expects less.

Or, anyway, that's more comforting and laudable than unquestioning, unwarranted obedience.

"Sure," says Seb, and rubs his hands on the suit Moriarty gave him.

Moriarty clings to Seb's shoulders as they ease down the wall. It's not as bad as Seb had thought - the brick face has been hidden by paint, but he can just work his fingers into the crevices left behind, just catch his feet, bare of shoes and socks, on the roughness of the wall. He drops the last meter or so, feels Moriarty's knees tighten around his waist, just a bit longer than reflex, before the other man lets go all together.

A challenge met and surpassed. Even if Seb’s fingers and toes are aching and Moriarty was heavier than expected.

"Where's the car?" asks Seb.

"Past the guards," says Moriarty, and then they're caught by a flashlight. A man shouts in Italian, then in English.

"Halt! Stop right there, or I'll shoot!"

Moriarty is looking at Seb, and it's still Seb's job to get them out of there. Fuck.

Seb runs at the guard, because a man with a gun never expects that. It's harder to hit a moving target, anyway. Seb tucks his head behind his leading right shoulder; it can take the impact and besides, he’s left-handed and who needs a non-dominant arm, anyway?

The guard shoots, but the bullet goes wide, and Seb is bowling him over. They hit the ground awkwardly and Seb's left wrist crunches, a bright explosion of pain. But he has the gun, a guardsman's rifle, and the man stops screaming when Seb levels it at him.

A gunshot will bring more guards surer than a shout or a tussle in the grounds. Seb reverses the weapon and smashes the guard's head with the butt of the rifle. And again. And again.

Seb stops when the guard is unconscious, because he's efficient and they're still on the run. But Moriarty is staring at him, waiting.

The guard could probably identify them.

Seb smashes the guard's head again, watches the blood leak out. Then he slings the rifle over his shoulder, and follows Moriarty toward the car.

There's one more guard on the way, and this one does get Seb's shoulder, just a graze, before Seb gives up on being quiet and shoots back. But they get to the Jag, and Seb opens the door for Moriarty before getting in himself.

His wrist feels like shit.

Moriarty's speaking urgently with the driver, and Seb's sitting upright, waiting out the pain. The car starts moving and tilts, slowly, and Seb's confused by how Moriarty can stay in his seat when the car is sideways like this, and-

Seb ends up with his head in Moriarty's lap, and Moriarty's hands stroking his hair, leaving flecks of dried blood. He winces when his shoulder brushes the seat and when a bump jostles his wrist, no movement safe except the slow turn of his head into Moriarty’s soothing fingers.

"You did very well," murmurs Moriarty. The words seem to come from very far away, muffled by the pain that pounds in Seb's ears. "Such a good boy."

Seb keeps quiet and still. He has to wait for treatment, any motion is energy lost and wasted. Wait for the doctors-

"Three gorgeous kills, for me," says the dark emptiness behind Moriarty's eyes. "And I only had to do one of them. You're a prize, Colonel Sebastian Moran. What wouldn't you do, if I gave the command?"

Seb closes his eyes, and the darkness begins to swallow him up.

"There, there," says Moriarty. "My good Sebastian. I think we should be exclusive, don't you?"

Seb wakes up in his own flat, and his right shoulder is dressed and his left wrist is splinted, and there is a bottle of codeine on the floor next to his mattress. His new suit is there too, blood and all, folded next to the painkillers.

There's a note next to his pillow, he notices when he manages to sit up. It's got a phone number in handwriting he doesn't recognise but knows, and underneath it says 'call me.'

Seb takes a couple of codeine and goes back to sleep.

\---

Mary drops in, when it's been a few days and Seb hasn't done anything except shuffle to the bathroom and the kitchen and back. The codeine is making him nauseous and tired, but he can manage water and toast.

Seb sleeps through his phone ringing and doesn't bother returning calls. Mary unlocks the door with the key Seb gave her for emergencies, and her face goes white when she sees Seb lying on his mattress.

"What happened to you?" she says. "You didn't have a job."

"Moriarty," says Seb.

"Fuck," Mary kneels down next to Seb, runs her fingers across his wrist. "Is this what happens when you tell the bastard no, then?"

"Told him yes," says Seb.

Mary shakes her head. Seb tries to see himself as she does - greasy and thinning, the splint on his wrist and the bandage on his shoulder, the one he's managed to change once or twice but not enough. His fingers and toes are scabbed and red and hurting from climbing down that wall.

"Kind of a mess," says Seb.

Mary snorts and pulls off the bandage on his shoulder.

The graze is healing over - he's gotten lucky and it's not infected. Mary checks his wrist too, and his fingers and toes, and then kicks him into the shower. She lets Seb lean on her as he gets in, and covers her eyes when she hands him a towel. Seb’s not sure if she’s preserving his modest or her own, but he manages to get some sweatpants on, and gives up on a shirt. It's warm enough, he doesn't need any difficult clothes.

"What have you been taking?" asks Mary as she re-splints Seb's wrist, his arm stretched out across the kitchen table.

"What he left," says Seb. "Pills every five hours or so." Mary looks at the bottle and tells Seb to halve his dose.

"We should probably get this x-rayed," says Mary. "And you'll have to start doing exercises with it. No more lying in bed."

Seb shrugs with his good shoulder.

"What were you thinking?" asks Mary.

"Wasn't," says Seb.

"Obviously." Mary starts redressing Seb's shoulder. Seb is very thankful for his well-stocked first-aid kit. The antiseptic and the gauze are cool against his skin, stinging enough to tell him he’s healing, and the tape wraps lightly along his shoulder blade.

"He wants to be exclusive," says Seb.

Mary laughs. "After this? I hope you told him where to stick it."

"Wasn't up to talking," says Seb.

Mary glances up at him as she breaks the tape. "You're not considering it, are you?"

Seb shrugs.

"Exclusive." Mary drums her fingers. "Like he's asking for a boyfriend."

Moriarty's a sleek little man, clever and sharp, and the darkness in him is reaching out to Seb, calling to him, ready to pull him into it and never let him escape. Seb would fuck Moriarty in a second, if he thought he were interested.

"Nah," says Seb, and pulls his arm away from Mary. He works it, trying to see if everything still rotates as it should. "Just a hired gun." His shoulder's fine, stinging but fine, but he tries his other arm and his wrist _burns_ when he bumps it.

Mary watches him with narrowed eyes.

"Get to a doctor," she says. "Drink lots of liquids. Careful on the pills."

"Yeah," says Seb.

Mary stands up and gets ready to leave, but then she stops, fishes post-its and a pen from her bag.

"Nearly forgot," she says. "I had to ditch my old number. Here, this is my new one." She jots it down, backwards, sticks it to Seb's forehead so he'll see it if he looks in the mirror. "Call me if you need help getting rid of Moriarty."

"See you," says Seb, and watches Mary walk out the door, his vision half-obscured by yellow paper.

\---

Seb goes to a clinic and has his wrist checked by a short doctor with sandy hair, who looks over his injuries with sympathy and doesn't bother asking any questions. Seb appreciates the courtesy. He doesn't really appreciate the new, weaker painkillers, but he takes them anyway, stashes the codeine in his first-aid kit. It'll be useful later on.

His wrist heals, over weeks. Seb starts teaching himself Russian, then gives up on that and starts trying to find someone to teach him Russian instead. He learns as slowly as he heals, but everything takes time.

There are two notes on his kitchen table, each with a number, each with 'call me' written at the bottom. Seb doesn't touch them, after he's set them side-by-side.

It’s two weeks after Moriarty, and Seb moves. He can't move the mattress by himself, so he gets a neighbour to help (he would have called Mary, before). Seb rents a car and puts his gun cases and his mattress in the back, takes them to the new flat, and gets one of his new neighbour to help him haul the mattress into the lift and out again, leaving it on the floor of his unfurnished bedroom.

At the last minute Seb realises he left the notes on the kitchen table and has to drive back and get them before leaving the car back at the rental place.

Four weeks, and Seb's antsy but his wrist is still aching. He rotates his hand and works the arm, twiddles the fingers to see if he can without hurting (he can’t). Getting better.

Six weeks, and the splint is off and the sandy-haired doctor says that Seb's fine, just don't do it again, whatever it was, and Seb's sitting at his new kitchen table, wondering who to call. Mary or Moriarty, two notes, two numbers.

If Seb concentrates, he can still smell the death on Moriarty's hands, the way blood smells rotten and wrong when there's that much of it outside of the skin. If Seb concentrates, he can understand why Mary's warning him away. He can’t keep up with Moriarty, and it (or someone) will kill him if he tries. It's obvious what he should do, really.

Seb dials. The phone rings five times, and Seb is about to hang up when the call's answered halfway through the sixth ring.

"A bit busy now," says Moriarty, and he sounds angry. "Is this important?"

"No," says Seb. "I can call later, if-"

"Sebastian!" says Moriarty, and his voice gains warmth like a fire. "No no no, now is _good_. I thought you'd forgotten about me!"

"Recovery period," says Seb. He wiggles his fingers, still stiff under the appearance of good health. Today’s the first day he was able to sign his name or type an email with both hands.

"Six weeks for a distal radius fracture," says Moriarty. "Sensible, aren't you, sensible Sebastian. Are you better now?"

"Yeah," says Seb. "Listen, about your offer-"

"You need details, I'm sure. The pay, the responsibilities, the hours, wait- Get away from that, you wretched-"

Seb doesn't flinch at the gunshots, sharp and broken over the static of the connection. He just waits for Moriarty to finish, lights a black clove cigarette and smokes it as the pause lengthens.

"There," says Moriarty, at last. "Back to Sebastian. What do you want to know?"

Seb finishes the cigarette, stubs it out, lets the smoke from his mouth fill the room.

"When can I start?"

Moriarty's smile isn't audible, but Seb hears it all the same.

\---

When he meets Moriarty that afternoon, Seb wears a suit, knots his tie in the Atlantic knot that Moriarty had liked. Moriarty tsks when he sees Seb and re-knots the tie, pulling it into just the same pattern, but tighter. Seb swallows against the collar, and his smile rivals Moriarty's.

\---

The job pays well, it turns out, and while Seb has a lot of responsibilities, they're ones that he can handle. He's Moriarty's second, now, in charge of planning whatever Moriarty doesn't want to think about and doing whatever Moriarty doesn't want to dirty his hands with. In practice, this involves shooting a number of people, and threatening to shoot most everyone else.

("I feel like I've been preparing for this my whole life," says Seb, and Moriarty laughs even though it wasn't a joke.)

And the hours suck, but what can you do? Seb follows Moriarty everywhere, soon learns that the boss needs regular meals and to take his meds, whatever claims he makes to the contrary.

The first time Seb drops a sandwich in front of Moriarty, the man stares at it like it's a scorpion.

(No scorpions, no poison. Seb got the sandwich from a corner store, checked to see that the plastic wrap was intact and then tasted it anyway, waited fifteen minutes after he took a bite and then cut off the sampled edge.)

"Haven't seen you eat in two days," says Seb, and stands with his hands on the free chair, waiting to be told if he can sit down.

"You're my gun, not my nursemaid," says Moriarty.

Seb shrugs.

"If you've nothing better to do than fetch and carry, bring caffeine." Moriarty waves Seb away. "I have to finish this by tomorrow. Do you realise how much work terrorism is?"

Seb shakes his head, goes to buy tea. When he comes back, the sandwich is gone and Moriarty is more cheerful. He lets Seb sit down and help, and that's good.

But the challenge wasn't there and the darkness didn't wink, so there's no reward. Seb has to wait for the sign.

\---

When Seb's been working for Moriarty about a month, the sign comes. It's in the darkness of Moriarty's eyes when he looks at the new gang that's been moving into his territory. It’s lurking behind the words and sounds Moriarty uses to tell Seb that they all need to go. And that he's not to involve anyone else. And that he gets one gun and one knife, and Moriarty is going to _watch_.

"Sure," says Seb, because the voice that told him when Moriarty crossed a line screamed itself hoarse long ago. He sets up the meeting, picks out a handgun.

It's a bad idea. Seb's smart and fast, but walking into a room full of your enemies - the top ten leaders and captains in the rival gang - should be suicide. Seb suspects that Moriarty's trying to get rid of him, sick of being given sandwiches and tea and being reminded about the asthma inhaler he pretends he doesn't have.

But none of that matters when the challenge is there, when Seb's been ordered. To fail wouldn’t be suicide, not exactly, but it would still mean his death.

So Seb walks into the tigers' den. He talks to the men and women there, just long enough to gather them together, to catch their interest.

To see who has a holster under their jacket.

Seb draws the gun from the small of his back and one, two, three, four go down. Five and six get shots off, but they're frightened and the shots skid harmlessly across the concrete floor. Two more shots and five and six have fallen, followed by the last man with a holster. The other three have scattered, unarmed, relying on speed and the shadows to hide them. Seb hunts them down. The corners of the warehouse are dark, so he saves the bullets, uses his knife against the hysterical screaming man and the cold canny woman who try to fight before they crumple. The last man runs for the door, but Seb catches the movement in time, fires a quick double-tap. The man’s head breaks and spills onto the floor.

Seb checks the bodies, slits their throats to make sure. His wrist aches, dully, so he does most of the work with his right hand.

Moriarty is clapping. He steps out of the shadows, and Seb can only think that a stray bullet should have hit him, he was standing so close.

"That was perfect," says Moriarty. He steps delicately around the corpses, stops to kick one and let its neck gape open. "My good Sebastian."

Sebastian breathes, in and out. He wipes the knife on his trousers, because you don't leave a blade with filth on it. He starts to wipe his hands on his trousers too, because they're smeared with blood and fluid, but Moriarty's even closer now and he grabs Seb's hands, turns them palms up.

"How did it feel?" says Moriarty. His black-hole eyes are hungry, hungry. "Why did you do it?"

"Because you told me to," says Seb. He's aching for a cigarette, but he's not allowed to smoke around Moriarty. He shifts uncomfortably instead, jittery from energy spent and reserved, and Moriarty's nearness. Moriarty notices, of course, and he grins.

"Did killing get the puppy excited?" he asks, and he drops Seb's hands, presses into Seb's body. "Or are you just happy to see me?"

"Not a dog," mumbles Seb, and he wasn't hard before but Moriarty was, apparently, and Seb's getting there fast. What the hell, what the hell, and Moriarty's unbuckling his belt and Seb clutches at his shoulders and tries not to whine.

He leaves bloodstains on Moriarty's shoulders and sleeves and face, bucks up into the hand surrounding him and leaves stripes of come on Moriarty's wrist.

"Bit of a mess," says Seb, trying like blazes to keep his feet against the weakness in his knees.

"I wouldn't worry," says Moriarty. "Someone'll be along to clean it up." He licks the come from his wrist and sucks one of Seb's fingers clean of blood, the unblinking darkness in his eyes made harder and heavier with satisfaction.

"Yes, Boss," says Seb, awed.

"You can call me Jim," says Moriarty, conveying a great favour. Seb nods, slots that into place.

"Most people call me Seb," he offers.

"I'm not most people, Sebastian, _puppy_ ," says Jim, like Seb didn't know that already. "Now, let's get this show into a bedroom."

\---

When Seb does something Jim likes - plans a heist, disciplines an underling, finds Jim's Gameboy from where he left it in the car, kills someone - he gets rewarded. It's praise, or a pat on the head, or an achingly long blowjob that leaves Seb shaky and drained and flying.

Seb watches, briefly, to see if the rest of the crew gets the same treatment. Maybe it's just a standard perk. But it's not, and Seb doesn't understand why Jim's giving him this when he could just be giving Seb a bonus, like a normal employer, like Jim does with all of his other employees.

But Seb's the only one who's drawn to Jim's black-hole eyes. The others shy away when Jim looks at them. They call him 'Mister Moriarty' and try to make themselves small and insignificant. Seb never feels larger and more important than when he's looking into Jim's eyes, waiting to see what they want from him. He's not sure if this is something he grew into or something Jim created in him, but it feels right.

Four months, he's been working for Jim, and Seb runs interference on an art theft that nets the Organisation a few million pounds. When he and the crew return, cases of money in tow, Jim reaches up on his toes to pat Seb on the head, right there in front of everyone.

" _Very_ good," says Jim, and then his phone rings and he walks away. Seb's head twists to follow Jim until he can't see him anymore.

One of the greener members of the crew snickers, and Seb breaks his wrist, slowly and carefully, and tells a more discrete member of the crew, Ginta, to drop the kid near a hospital.

\---

Six months and Jim tells Seb to come home with him, spends an afternoon tracing Seb's scars and not letting him come.

Seb can't figure out what he's done right, nothing special has happened, and it makes him antsy and uncertain, like he wants to hurt somebody just to deserve this. Even though it's all just teasing, frustrating and not enough, and Seb growls when Jim pinches at the base of his cock and still won't let him come.

"You never beg for it," says Jim, and he sounds absolutely fascinated. "Don't you want anything, puppy?"

Seb laughs, hoarse and out of breath. "Take what you'll give me," he manages.

Jim grins and twists his wrist, and Seb nearly whites out from the force of his release. But he keeps his eyes on Jim's own, watching to see what the darkness wants from him.

Nothing.

Seb's eyes slide shut eventually, with Jim still staring at him, and he loses some time in drowsing, uneasy and still waiting for the order. In his dreams Seb chases men and women, takes bodies to Jim as supplication and tribute, and Jim rejects every one of them until Seb is offering up himself, throat slit and blood flowing from his shoulder and wrist.

Seb half-wakes up with Jim curled around him, whispering in his ear.

"-Pavlov, Sebastian?"

"Wha'?" says Seb. He tries to turn over, but Jim keeps him still with one light hand.

"Do you know who Pavlov is, Sebastian?"

Seb thinks back to before Jim, before the army, to Eton and Oxford. The name sounds familiar.

"Behaviourist," he decides, at last. "Something about stimulus and response."

"Excellent, full marks," says Jim. He's playing - that answer wouldn't be enough to get praise, not normally, but Seb can recognise the lead-in to a monologue when he hears one.

"Ivan Pavlov had a dog, and before he fed it, he rang a bell. After a while, the dog began to salivate just from hearing the bell."

"Right," says Seb. "Because it thought the bell meant food."

"No thinking, Sebastian," says Jim. "The dog didn't reason. It's all very automatic. Stimulus - bell - and response - drooling - with no time for thought. The prompt becomes one with the reward."

Jim's fingers probe Seb's jaw and then his mouth, as if looking for flecks of drool. Seb nips at the fingers, and Jim slaps his cheek, almost too hard to be play.

"I learned about Pavlov when I was in school," says Jim. "And he did many experiments. If you stop giving the dog food, for example, eventually he ignores the bell. But I always wondered, what happens when you train a dog, stimulus, and response, and then one day you just feed him, no prelude? Does he not care? Or does he spend his whole dinner nervous, looking over his shoulder for the bell?"

Jim's hypotheticals aren't particularly subtle. Seb tries to roll over to face him, and again Jim stops him. Seb could push, he's easily stronger, but that's not what this is.

"And I thought to myself," says Jim. "What's the point of a thought experiment, if you don't get to experiment?"

There's a silence.

"It's the nervous thing," says Seb. "I could really use someone to shoot."

Jim giggles, delighted. "Good puppy," he says. "Oh, that's been bothering me for ages."

He lets Seb turn to face him at last, stare into those black holes, filled now with a curiosity that’s been satisfied.

"So," says Seb. "What happens to the subject, when the experiment's over?"

"There's always another experiment," says Jim, gaze sliding across Seb's face and down. "For instance, I wonder what I have to do to make you beg?"

They don't find out that evening, or that night, but Jim manages it in the early early morning, when Seb hasn't had a smoke in twenty hours and Jim's got the pack.

Then they experiment with how long Seb can smoke in Jim's presence without triggering an asthma attack and the resulting murderous and breathless rage (about a minute).

\---

It's easier, afterwards. Or more difficult. Seb had been relying on Jim's awareness and attention, and Jim has other things to think about, now that the main experiment is over. Seb is free to manage the crew and be Jim's right hand, without the demands of his black-hole eyes.

Seb's leash has been unclipped, and one day he comes into work with his tie hanging loose around his neck and Jim doesn't bother to tighten it.

Seb wishes he didn't miss the control.

He grits his teeth and snaps at the crews, pistol whips a man who tries to cut into Jim's profits, and sends himself out for a hit that Jim was contacted about.

Jim smiles, and there's no praise, not even a flicker in his eyes before he turns to the next problem. The cold-warm interest that Seb was trusting in was a mask, like Jim from IT or James the barman or any of the identities that Jim uses to get close to people, to manipulate them.

Jim from IT is dating a woman now, Molly Hooper. Seb's met her, once, twice if you count watching her from the end of a scope (which Seb doesn't). She's nice, as far as Seb can tell. But she makes him wonder how much the Jim Moriarty he met was tailored to Seb, to his manipulation, and what that says about what Seb wants. Jim from IT is Molly’s perfect boyfriend, and it’s creepy to watch Jim take that up, to watch Jim shed it.

Molly's a good woman. Seb would be disappointed if he had to kill her. But at least it's not her that Jim's really interested in, so maybe she'll skid through, alive and lucky. Jim has a new obsession in life, a skinny man who beat one of Jim's cab driver charity case. Sherlock Holmes, who looks like a snake, narrow face and heavy jaw, mouth widening and gaping until it can swallow them up, Jim’s whole organisation. The snake and his familiar, sandy-haired doctor.

Molly is trying to get to Sherlock, who's trying to get to Jim, who wants to be got, maybe, or he’s wondering how close Holmes will get. It makes Seb's brain ache with jealousy and frustration, just because Jim's attention is elsewhere. Seb shouldn't need it, and eventually he won't. It's just an addiction, and all he has to do is ride out the cravings and shakes, just like he did with the army, just like he never did with cigarettes.

Seb decides to go to France, to talk to Jim's chief of staff there.

"You hate France," murmurs Jim, texting. To Sherlock Holmes, no doubt, even if it's through Molly or another intermediary.

Seb shrugs. Jim doesn't react, his eyes still glued to the screen, so Seb has to grunt, an annoyed, forced sound.

"You don't speak French," says Jim.

"Learned Russian," says Seb, remembering, and Jim nods, as if that actually made any sense.

\---

Paris is as miserable as usual, and Seb spends the whole time arguing with a succession of men and women who refuse to admit they speak English. Half of the most important discussions are conducted in Portuguese, which hardly anyone speaks either, but at least it's a romance language and their eyes flash when Seb curses at them in it.

There are a few fights, fast and vicious and angry. Seb comes back across the Channel with blood still clinging to his nails. The border guards don't notice or don't care.

"Just in time!" says Jim, when Seb walks into the current office. "I need a few good snipers, or one brilliant one and as many people as can hold guns."

"For what?" says Seb. In his mind he's already flipping through the people in Jim's crews, his contacts, who's the least useless.

" _Sherlock_ ," says Jim, fast and excited, "wants to meet. And I'm going to have a hostage, and the hostage is going to be wearing _explosives_ , and I need you there to make sure that everything goes boom if I want it to."

"Have you eaten today?" asks Seb. The tremor in Jim's voice is a little too subtle to be calculated.

"Technically," says Jim, and Seb gets him a sandwich and listens to the rest of the plan.

Which he doesn't like.

But Seb kidnaps the sandy-haired doctor, whose real name is John Watson, sees the moment of recognition that Watson can't do anything with. Recognising a patient from months ago. Seb straps the Semtex to Watson's body, checks to make sure it's all relatively stable.

It's Seb and a half-dozen good snipers at the pool, waiting in the upper floors. Jim talks, and talks, leaves, comes back, and talks. Seb nearly gets the signal to shoot eight or nine times, but Jim always checks himself. Seb's glad of it, because that's a fuck-ton of Semtex. He's not sure if he's ready to commit suicide for Jim, just on Jim's say-so.

Jim leaves again, for good this time, and Seb packs up as fast as he can, leaves the rest of the shooting gallery there to sort themselves out, manages to get to Jim's car just before the familiar black Jag starts to pull away. Jim frowns at him as Seb gets in and sets his rifle case on the floor, but he doesn't object, doesn't kick Seb out.

The first five minutes are silent.

"Office?" asks Seb, at last.

"Flat," says Jim. "Yours, your flat."

Seb gives the driver his address, and makes a note to move by the end of the week. He still doesn't like it when people know where he lives.

"What happened?" he asks, settling back. "We could've killed them. You could have gotten out, first. Or when they took the Semtex off-"

"Don't get ahead of me," says Jim, angry for a brief moment before he starts rubbing at his forehead. "Not yet, not yet, there are other things in the works, I can't-"

The silence lasts longer this time, lasts until Jim is in Seb's rooms and Seb is putting away his gun. Jim breaks it by laughing at Seb's mattress, spread out on the floor as always.

"Don't you ever have a proper bed?" asks Jim.

"Too much trouble to move," says Seb.

Jim prowls around the edges of the room, then collapses onto the mattress, stretches out and upwards. He's still wearing his suit, and Seb can hear weak stitches in the shoulders popping from the odd position.

"You'll have to get a new jacket," he says.

"I liked the lasers." Jim shucks the offending jacket, throws it at Seb. Seb catches it and drapes it over his one chair.

"Never would use them normally," says Seb. "Sloppy. Obvious." He sits on the mattress, lets his legs splay out onto the floor, watches Jim.

"They were beautiful," says Jim, working off his tie. "All those little splashes of red."

His eyes, half-lidded, fix on Seb, with all of the draw and power and command that they had when they first met.

"Good puppy," says Jim, grinning, hungry. "Painting that perfect picture, just for me."

The switch that Jim made in Seb's head _flicks_ , turns him on, shuts him off, and he unbuttons Jim's shirt with as much speed and care as he can manage, presses his cheek and his teeth to skin as Jim praises him and strokes his hair.

"Yes, good, good," says Jim as Seb starts on his belt. "You'd die for me, wouldn't you, Sebastian? Take a bullet, take the fall, blow yourself up in a blaze of loyalty?"

" _Yes_ ," says Sebastian, because he has no thoughts or doubts, not when he's like this.

Jim laughs, and keeps laughing.

"Random reinforcement schedule," he says, when they're done and Seb is trying to clean up with a polishing rag and a dirty bath towel. He needs to do laundry.

"Random praise is more effective than a predictable reinforcement," says Jim, when Seb doesn't respond.

"You're good at unpredictable," says Seb. Jim waves a hand, accepting the observation as just that. There's no switch in _his_ head, and Seb's good opinion hardly matters.

"And even when you think the conditioning is gone," says Jim, "nope! All I have to do is give you the reinforcement, and there you are again. Resurgence."

Seb's read the Wikipedia article, he knows all about Pavlov's dog and behaviourism and operant conditioning, now. He's not sure if he likes watching it acted out on his body. Not sure if he likes it too much.

"You'll never get rid of it," says Jim, pleased with himself, maybe with Seb. He leans in close, face perfectly expressionless and still. "You'll never be rid of me, Sebastian, no matter what you do, no matter where you go."

"Good," says Seb, and watches Jim's black eyes ripple with surprise.

\---

But Jim lies, and he lies by telling the truth.

\---

Jim lies when he says that Seb shouldn't worry about Irene Adler, because she won't be coming to the office. Because she doesn't, but then she's in Jim's hotel room when Seb goes there to wake him up. Seb lets himself in with the key Jim gave him, carrying Jim's pill bottle and a thermos of tea. But Jim's nowhere to be seen, just Irene fucking Adler, curled up in Jim's sheets. Staring up and sideways at Seb. Smiling.

"Jim here?" asks Seb, schooling his face. "Wake up call."

"He left at four," says Adler. She sits up, lets the sheets fall from her frame, stretches. "Something about needing to see a man about an eel." She seems to think that's funny.

"He's not supposed to talk to Mister Hayakawa alone," says Seb. He sets down the meds next to the standard issue hotel TV, doesn't look at Adler's breasts. Much.

"Why not?" Adler stands up, looking for something. She doesn't bother with the sheet at all, now. Seb can respect being comfortable in your own body. He continues not looking, because maybe Jim told Adler that she was allowed to walk around in his hotel room naked, but he didn't tell Seb that he was allowed to look.

"They get bad ideas together," says Seb. Adler's found her skirt at the foot of the bed. Seb takes a sip of the tea, because even if Jim comes back, he won't want it anymore, not if it's cold. "He say anything?"

"Sorry, no orders," says Adler. She clasps her bra behind her back, deft. "But if you're free, I could give you some errands to run."

Seb snorts, shakes his head. He has his own work to do. If Jim's out with Hayakawa, then today's gameplan might be off. Seb should contact the explosives team, tell them to wait on Arizona until they get the word-

Adler's sitting on the bed again, fully dressed, legs crossed as she runs fingers through her hair. The sheets are messy with sleep and whatever else she and Jim did in that bed.

"We didn't sleep together," says Adler. She smiles again, starts winding her hair into a bun.

Seb can't decide whether he's that easy to read or if Adler always thinks it's about sex, and just gets lucky sometimes.

"We talked until four," says Adler. "Just planning, really, and then he got incredibly excited about the eels. I didn't want to find a cab at four in the morning, so I decided to stay here."

"You don't have to explain yourself," says Seb. "It's not my business."

"Hand me those pins?" asks Adler. Seb hands her a set of hairpins from the table, clipped onto one of Jim's business cards.

The pins go into the bun, one after another, and somehow her hair stays up, tightly coiled like a cobra. But Adler uncoils herself like a cat, pads around the room. "No, it's not your business," she says. "But it's my business to control people's impressions of me, and I don't _want_ you to keep quiet and assume."

Seb shrugs. Adler locates her heels, underneath a chair.

"Jimmy and I are very similar," says Adler, gaining inches.

"Short?" asks Seb. Adler laughs, turns.

"We only play straight for pay." Her lips quirk, and her eyes dance, grey-blue points of light. "And what about you, dear? What do you do for pay?"

Seb drinks more of the tea, because he needs to do something with his mouth, and he's not going to answer that.

Adler saves him the trouble. "Fetch, carry, sit, stay, _sic_ ," she says. "Jimmy's quite happy with you, isn't he? His gundog, his lap hound-"

"Don't you have somewhere to be?" asks Seb.

"Trying to get rid of me, Sebastian?" Adler takes a step closer, lays a hand on Seb's collar, straightens it. "But I thought we were having fun."

"Don't call me Sebastian," says Seb, and picks Adler's hand off of his shirt, drops it.

"Colonel, then." Adler smiles at him, like he's proved a point for her, but Seb doesn't know what game she's playing with Jim, doesn't care.

"I'm going to take a shower, Colonel," announces Adler, "at home." And that's her out of the door.

Seb stands for a moment, sipping tea, and he's just finished when the door bursts open and Jim walks in, carrying an eel as big as he is, both of them covered in blood. It's probably not human blood, but Seb makes a note to make sure Hayakawa is still among the living.

"Was that my tea?" Jim asks.

"I'll get you another one," says Seb.

The eel turns out to be full of gems (for some reason), and Jim doesn't want _tea_ , and Seb has to argue with him about meds again, and whether Jim's had anything to eat today.

"We could cook the eel," says Seb, even though he doesn't know how you cook eels at all, and there's no kitchen in the hotel. Jim laughs, and Seb tries to glare, but pretty soon he's lying on the bed that Adler slept in, letting Jim trace fish blood over Seb's shirt and chin. Blood from before, dried under his nails and caked in his palms. New blood, from gutting the eel, dripping from Jim's fingertips.

"Sebastian," murmurs Jim, pressing handprints of blood into Seb's chest. "Dear Sebastian. You're going to have to change, after this."

"I figured," says Seb.

\---

Jim lies when he says that Seb doesn't need to know every little thing that's happening, because it's not as if Jim is going anywhere.

Because, fine, after the weird fucked-up terrorist plot with Adler, Jim is still in London. But Jim is also in the hands of Her Majesty's government, so it's not as if he's in easy reach.

Seb is Jim's right hand, and now he's Chief of Operations, Chief of Every Little Thing, and it would help if Seb knew why they're maintaining a house in Chelsea or a high-class restaurant in Leicester Square.

They’re probably both just fronts for drugs.

Seb goes into maintenance mode, while he waits for Jim. No new games, just play the old ones, quiet and safe. It's surprising how much he actually does know, just from the months and years, now, of doing what Jim told him to do.

It's surprising how much he does what Jim wants, even when Jim's not there. Seb only smokes outside, even though no one on the crews cares. He wears suits to work, even though he could be back in his faded tees and ripped jeans. He makes tea in the morning and drinks it, absently, puts the pill bottle back away in his medicine cabinet when he realises that Jim isn't there to take it.

Seb recognises what he's doing and can't stop himself, can't override the training. At least it means he's prepared when Jim twirls back through the door, eyes emptier and hungrier than ever, and takes the tea away from him at last.

"Miss me?" asks Jim.

"You need a shower," says Seb, because Jim is rank and raw and miserable-looking, for all that he has a grin on his face. "Also, when can I kill Mycroft Holmes?"

"Worry about him later," says Jim. "I have the _best_ plan for getting rid of Sherlock, puppy, let me tell you-"

Jim doesn't tell Seb everything about this plan, either, not when Seb shepherds him into the shower or when he's scrubbing soap through Jim's hair, or when he's trying to push a sandwich straight into Jim's stomach by way of his still-talking mouth.

Seb's just glad to see him. Jim's mouth smiles, again, and his eyes swallow Seb’s feelings down.

"Aren't you pleased master's home?" asks Jim.

"Fuck off," says Seb, confident enough to say what he should, now that both of them know he doesn't mean it.

\---

Jim lies, when he says there won't be any problems. Because his plan progresses without a pause, without a hiccup, but it causes so many problems.

Jim asks for a gun, and Seb doesn't think about it, just gets him a .45 Smith and Wesson from the drawer of handguns. It's a gorgeous piece of work, all brushed black metal and shiny silver trigger, and Seb doesn't think about it when Jim strokes the gun, sometimes, when his eyes look far away.

Jim likes things that are sleek and deadly, and Seb's benefited from that. And Seb's been known to stroke his guns, from time to time (all of the time).

Jim tells Seb to make puppets for a kids show, and Seb hires someone, because no one should see the kind of puppets he would make. Jim notices, and complains, but the puppets are better, all right.

Jim tells Seb to watch his trial on TV, and Seb does, laughing at Sherlock Homes' face when Holmes is called to the stand. Jim gets off as easily as he'd let himself get caught, and Seb picks him up from the courthouse, grins into Jim's mouth when Jim grabs his head and winds fingers in his hair.

Jim tells Seb to take him to Sherlock's house, tells Seb to kidnap some kids, tells Seb to call John Watson and inform him that his landlady has been shot. Seb follows orders, because that's what he's been trained to do, and that's what he is.

That's why Seb's got his scope trained on John Watson, the sandy-haired doctor, when Jim shoots himself.

Seb doesn't hear until later. Jim had someone discrete detailed to clean up and dispose of the body, and no one else knew about it. The crew disperses, and Seb is waiting for Jim when Ginta walks up, hands a gun to Seb.

.45 Smith and Wesson.

"He wanted you to have it," says Ginta.

Seb stares at the gun as Ginta leaves. The brushed empty black of the slide reflects his gaze. The chamber's unloaded, and there's a speck of spit on the muzzle, where it was improperly cleaned.

Seb goes home, doesn't think. To think would be to admit it.

\---

 **Extinction** is defined as the gradual fading of a conditioned or operant response. If you stop providing rewards, eventually you stop getting a response. The rat will only push a lever so many times before he decides there aren't any pellets left.

Seb watches as his habits become extinct, one by one.

He runs Jim's empire for a while, the drug trade and the kidnapping and the extortion. (Not the murder, Seb hasn't the stomach for murder anymore. Jim's not there to tell him _it's perfect_ , so Seb gets the crew to do it, doesn't even go shooting.) But slowly it seems to matter less and less, and one day Seb walks away from work, moves from his room into Jim's empty hotel room, tosses his phone.

The criminal economy is in all sorts of shocks, for a while, but it settles down on its own, without bothering Seb. No one knows how to find him, no one knows where he lives.

Seb wears suits, for a while, ties Atlantic knots, tight up against his throat. But the knots get looser, day after day, and eventually Seb leaves off the jacket and tie, just a button-down shirt untucked over slacks, then jeans, then a t-shirt. It doesn't matter. Jim's not there to complain.

Seb stops making tea, one day, he doesn't even like tea, buys a coffee maker and uses that. The bottle of Jim's pills stay in the medicine cabinet, gathering dust. Seb sleeps in, face mashed against the pillow that Jim used to use, and can't tell anyone else has ever lived here, can only smell himself.

Seb starts smoking in Jim's hotel room, cigarette after cigarette, letting the tobacco and clove ashes grind into the carpet and a haze of smoke fill the room. The smoke detector beeps once, just before Seb disconnects it. He couldn't smell Jim here anyway, and why else would he go out onto the balcony to smoke?

Seb burns Jim's things, mixes the ash with his stubbed-out cigarettes, and flings the whole mess into the Thames. He uses the last of the left-over Semtex to blow the floor that Jim's hotel room was on, and moves again.

Not there, not there, there's no hand at his throat or fingers in his hair, no words telling Seb what to do, who to be, what's perfect and what's dull. It would only take a message, a word, something to tell Seb that Jim's alive, and he could keep going. But there's nothing there, a shallow, grey, broken nothing to replace that deep black empty hole in Jim's eyes.

Seb is in a new flat, in a new kitchen, looking at a slip of paper he's been carrying around for a couple of years, tucked into the bottom of his best rifle's case. A phone number, with 'call me' scribbled at the bottom.

Seb dials, and hopes the number still works.

The phone rings, once, twice, five times. Seb drums his fingers and waits.

"Yeah?" says Mary, crackling into Seb's ear.

"Hey," says Seb.

Mary squeaks, briefly, recovers. "Sorry, who is this? You sound just like an old friend of mine-"

"Yeah," says Seb. "Yeah, that's me."

"Oh, fuck, _Seb_ ," says Mary, and no one's called Seb that in years, because Jim liked Sebastian, and the minions said Colonel Moran, and everyone else just ignored Seb or screamed for mercy.

"How's it been?" asks Seb, offering a branch of normalcy which Mary promptly rips out of his hands and tramples on.

"Three fucking years," says Mary, and Seb pulls the phone a little ways away from his ear. "Three years, and I thought you were _dead_ , Seb, that Moriarty had gotten to you and done you in-"

"Jim wouldn't do that," says Seb.

"He broke your wrist and left you," says Mary, and Seb had forgotten about that. He snorts, thinking about how he had lain in bed and felt sorry for himself, hadn't known what he was about to fall into.

"What's happened?" asks Mary. "I heard about Sherlock Holmes and that Richard Brook thing. Moriarty must be happy."

"He's dead," says Seb. Cool, calm, and collected, except for how his voice breaks on the words.

Silence on the line. Seb thinks about hanging up and pitching his phone out the window, but instead he breathes, in and out.

"Well," says Mary. "Well. Are you okay?"

"Not really," says Seb. He tucks the phone between his shoulder and ear, crushing it against himself, lights a cigarette and burns his fingers, stubs it out on the table. Breathes. "I don't know what to do with myself."

"Come to dinner," says Mary, decisively. It's what Seb always liked about her. She always knows what to do, even if Seb doesn't always listen. "Now, tonight. Meet my boyfriend. I think- I think you two will have something to talk about."

"Okay," says Seb, and writes down the address on the old post-it note, folds it up into his fist and his brain, gets his coat when the hours tick by and it's time to go.

He steps out into the empty broken grey of London, and tries to remember what happens after extinction.

Maybe he gets to learn new tricks.


End file.
